Tuesday, August 04, 2015

A good piece from Erin on the statements of a gun bigot

I'd recommend just go read it. Now, or soon as you can. I'm going to borrow part of it:1) "To me, ownership of a handgun tells me that you've more or less given up on civilization."There are two ways to parse this, and both of them have troubling
implications. The first is the assertion that anyone who owns a handgun
is, effectively, a savage. After all, isn't that "giving up on
civilization" means -- saying "screw it" and either figuratively or
literally embracing the ways of wild barbarism in order to eschew
civilization? If you give up on civilization, aren't you ipso facto
uncivilized? I find it troubling that, the author is effectively
dehumanizing those who disagree with him by calling them unworthy of
being able to exist within civilization.The second possible interpretation, albeit unspoken, is that anyone who chooses to own a handgun as opposed to owning one as part of their job, i.e. the military and the police,
has given up on civilization. This is actually far more troubling to me
than the former, as it ties into the second objectionable statement
below.2) "I do not own a gun for the same reason I do not filter my own drinking water or generate my own electricity - I live in a city, where, for a reasonable price, security, like water or electricity, is provided by trained professionals."With this statement, the author is essentially saying "I don't need to
protect myself, there are people who will do that for me." And,
referring back to statement one above, these trained professionals are
either savages (because they carry handguns) or -- and this is actually
the worse interpretation -- he supports the creation of police as "a
separate moral species, specially bred for violence, to be called from
their fortified compound to vacuum up problems and guilt."
She continues, quite well. I'll simply add my thought on #2:
I'm curious as to what this dumbass proposes to do in the time it takes the cops to get there. Assuming he's able to call before the situation goes to hell.

Erin notes something I have before as well: people who preen at being virtuous and pacifist and all, but will damn well call the cops- to come with guns and nightsticks and so forth- to save them from the predators. They have no problem paying someone else to do violence for them, but they damn sure don't want their precious hands directly dirty.

11 comments:

This is just another of those urban elitists that pride themselves on the fact that they are so "civilized" that not only do they have no need to do things for themselves, but they are flat incapable of it, and anyone who is MUST be a barbarian.

Sounds just like a very educated complete IDIOT. World is full of them. over educated numskulls who think they are the most intelligent people on earth. If we do not agree then we are "savages". K.M.R.A.

Civilization isn't "services the government sells you." Civilization isn't even dependent on government.

In 1980 seven tornados tore up Grand Island, Nebraska. We were without water and power for ten days, and sewer service for two weeks. Police were unavailable in our neighborhood, overwhelmed helping folks who needed it a lot more than we did. It was nearly three days before the National Guard arrived.

"Civilization" was people right after the storm checking on neighbors, folks gathering to cut and haul tree limbs and other debris from the roads, people who lent mechanical can openers to those who only had electric, and the neighbor who went and filled his pickup camper water tank so we could hose down kids.

Even for government, "civilization" was volunteer law enforcement, fire service, utility workers, and such who flooded in from surrounding towns to take up some of the slack.

Civilization isn't something you depend on or give up on, it's something you participate in.

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at elmtreeforge at att point net

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences. - C.S. Lewis

Y'all got on this boat for different reasons, but y'all come to the same place. So now I'm asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave. - Capt. Mal

A Rifleman’s Prayer:Oh Lord, I would live my life in freedom, peace and happiness, enjoying the simple pleasures of hearth and home. I would die an old, old man in my own bed, preferably of sexual overexertion.

But if that is not to be, Lord, if monsters such as this should find their way to my little corner of the world on my watch, then help me to sweep those bastards from the ramparts, because doing that is good, and right, and just.

And if in this I should fall, let me be found atop a pile of brass, behind the wall I made of their corpses. Geek with a .45

"He's Black Council,", I said.

"Or maybe stupid," Ebenezar countered.

I thought about it. "Not sure which is scarier."

Ebenezar blinked at me, then snorted. "Stupid, Hoss. Every time. Only so many blackhearted villains in the world, and they only get uppity on occasion. Stupid's everywhere, every day." Ebenezar McCoy

“A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition” ― Rudyard Kipling

This deprecation of individual freedom was objectionable to me. I am convinced now, as I was then, that man is an end because he is a child of God. Man is not made for the state; the state is made for man. To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person. Man must never be treated as means to the end of the state; but always as an end within himself." Dr. M.L. King Jr.